Abstract
When an item that elicits emotions or is distinctive is inserted within a memory list, memory for the preceding and the subsequent items is often inhibited (retrograde and anterograde amnesia, respectively). The present study demonstrates how this inhibition is related to the arousal of emotions or distinctiveness. A stimulus list consisting of 15 items was employed. The eighth item in the list was a picture that sought to arouse either a pleasant emotion, an unpleasant emotion, or was distinctive, while the other items were all nonsense syllables. Immediately after presentation of the list, participants (undergraduate and graduate students) were asked to freely recall as many of the items as possible. Three experiments were conducted that differed in terms of the exposure durations for the items. Item presentation was for two seconds in Experiment 1 and for four seconds in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, the eighth item was presented for either one or six seconds, with the remainder being presented for four seconds. The results indicated that while eighth items that were both emotional and distinctive caused anterograde amnesia in Experiment 1, only emotional effects were observed in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, an unpleasant eighth item caused anterograde amnesia under both the one-second and six-second conditions, but a pleasant item only did so in the one-second condition. No retrograde amnesia was observed in any of the experiments. The relationship between amnesia and attention triggered by emotions and distinctiveness is discussed.
